The Armchair Mayor’s Top 10 list for 2010

This past year has been such a joyous feedbag of fodder for commentary, such a wealth of folly and struggle inviting critique, that one scarcely knows where to begin.

Yet, we must, for what would the end of another year be without lists of the most noteworthy events of the preceding 12 months? The Armchair Mayor’s Top 10 of 2010 might be a little different than others, being based as it is upon those choice topics that made it into this space.

The list, therefore, is a hybrid of what was “big news” and what seemed to strike a cord among faithful readers of this column. Herewith, working our way to the top:

10. Christmas — Who would have thought Christmas would be such a topic of controversy during its very own season, when we are supposed to be filled with the spirit of it all? Yet, there it was, and you read about the Winter Break first, right here. In partnership with atheism and bus signs, it makes a worthy listee.

9. The Good Samaritan trucker — When Alex Fraser stopped to help what appeared to be stranded motorists one September night, he got a beating that put him in hospital, raising the question of why people are reluctant to help others in emergency situations.

8. HST petition — Would be ranked higher but it’s predominantly a provincial story with local implications. This armchair analyst called it “a victory for good, old, clumsy, imperfect, direct democracy.”

7. City Bylaws Department — Yes, it was another stellar year, highlighted by a July case in bylaws court over an astoundingly petty $500 ticket issued a skateboard mom for alleged littering. After a legal appeal by the mom, the department was appropriately taken to task.

6. The Kamloops Project — In a totally heart-warming and reaffirming exercise in community sharing, more than 600 residents recorded in pictures and words a moment in their lives Oct. 9, and posted it on a website set up by The Daily News. And ever since I took a photo of my old pickup truck that day, people keep asking me when I’m going to get it on the road.

5. Interior Health Authority — Increasingly referred to as the “Inferior Health Authority,” it moved administration of Royal Inland Hospital to Kelowna, then struggled through a series of so-called “dirty tools” embarrassments at RIH culminating in a rinse-cycle episode involving endoscopic instruments. And the parking’s no hell, either.

4. Sex in the cells — It was a bad PR year for our local RCMP detachment, but at least people weren’t laughing. That is, not until a number of officers and civic staff were caught enjoying a lesbian sex encounter in a detachment cell in September. Several investigations followed.

3. Parkade-at-the-park —  In a remarkable misreading of public sentiment, City council accepted a report from staff on the concept of building a parkade at Riverside Park, then compounded it by ordering up an expensive study on soil conditions at the site.

2. and 1. ACC gasification plan, and Wilbert Bartley. A tie puts two very different stories at the top. The ACC story, a carry-over from the previous year, generated public protest like no other in recent memory as a small group of “environmentalists” whipped up fear. The Bartley case generated its own headlines and protests after he was shot and killed by two RCMP officers in late July.

And there you have it. Is it comprehensive? Absolutely not. It doesn’t include some of my personal favorites such as beige buildings, the new TRU president’s haircut, trips to China, and my own 40^th anniversary in Kamloops, but the above list at least proves a point: life in the Loops is anything but dull.

mrothenburger@kamloopsnews.ca

http://www.armchairmayor.wordpress.com

A Christmas card from China

As I was thumbing through some old Christmas cards this week, I came across a beautiful card with the greeting, “With love and peace tonight, we all wish you Merry Christmas!”

Inside was a hand-written personal note:

“Dear Mayor Rothenburger,

“Season’s greetings and best wishes for the New Year. May the friendly relations and cooperation between our two districts develop continuously.

“Dr. Chen Gang

“Governor, the People’s Government of Chaoyang District.”

I’m not intending to drop names by sharing this exchange, but I thought it interesting that a man high up in China’s government sends out Christmas cards. I met Dr. Gang during a trip to Beijing with other B.C. mayors in 2004. He is, of course, a Communist. Yet he recognizes the importance of Christmas to us, and shares in its spirit.

He takes no offense to the fact that others celebrate this time of year, and that it originates with the Christian religion, and neither should we.

 

Holy holidays, Frootloops council meets again!

Mayor Peter Milkbar finds a whoopie cusion on his chair in Frootloops council chambers. He is not amused.

MAYOR MILKBAR:  Was that you,Coun. O’Fiddle? There’s nothing funny about my colonoscopy, not when it’s at the hands of the Inferior Health Authority. We don’t have time for your practical jokes today; we’ve got to make out our Christmas card list.

COUN. TINA TOAST: Brilliant, Your Rambleship!

MAYOR MILKBAR: People don’t seem to send cards the way they used to, but we’ve received a couple of nice ones. One is from our MP, Cathy Who of Whoville, with a picture of the prime minister singing All I Want For Christmas is a Majority. And there’s another from Kim Smokestack of Aboriginal Coagulation Corp. That one is kind of nice — it shows Santa heading north with a sleigh full of railway ties.

RANDY DOODLE, CAO: Your Nasalness, Coun. Watchdog hasn’t yet arrived in chambers.

COUN. PAT WARHORSE: Doesn’t matter, nobody ever seconds any of his motions anyway.

COUN. JIM HYDRANT: Hear, hear! I second that.

COUN. WATCHDOG: Sorry, Your Mumbleship, I was down checking out the excavations at the new parkade. The T’ootloops band office says it might be an ancient burial ground and wants all plans for the parkade put on hold.

MAYOR MILKBAR: Tell them to join the club.

COUN. TOAST: Brilliant idea, your Grumbleship, brilliant!

COUN. JOHN DeCAPPUCCINO: People come into the shop they say, “John, why is there a dead Christmas tree in front of City Hall?” I say, “I dunno, I’ll find out.”

DAVE TRAWLER, Frootloops Engineer: I have an answer to that, Your Warship. Our regulations clearly state that free-standing structures must be beige in color, so we brought in a pine-beetle tree that fills the bill nicely.

COUN. DeCAPPUCCINO: But even the decorations are brown.

TRAWLER: That’s because our bylaws state that “trim elements may be in primary colours.” We define brown and grey as primary colours.

COUN. TOAST: Brilliant!

COUN. MADGE SPIRULINA: Your Warthog, on the subject of Christmas cards, I received a complaint from a skateboard mom that our bylaws department sent her a card wishing her “Best of the season and we’ll get you next time!” I’m not sure that’s in keeping with the positive group-hug approach we’re aiming for.

BRIAN HASSLE, City Bylaws: I only sent her that card because she told me to ‘go stick it in a snowbank.’ We’re tired of playing Mr. Nice Guy with the enemy. We’re gonna hit ‘em where it hurts; we’ll fight ‘em in the trenches —“

MAYOR MILKBAR: Would somebody please remove bylaws officer Hassle? He’s foaming at the mouth again.

COUN. NANCY NETTLE: I received a request from a fellow named Bill Hardwood, who wants to put signs on all our Frootloops buses that say, “There probably is no City council, so stop worrying.” Is that something we would entertain, Your Washtub?

MAYOR MILKBAR: Well, we put up that “Trust In City Council” billboard so I guess we have to allow the other one. But time is marching on and we still haven’t approved our Christmas card list. It’s probably too late anyway, since Christmas is the day after tomorrow. What say we go with Plan B and get Byron McSnorkle to put an appropriate Christmas message on that humongous electronic sign we installed at the Fun and Games Capital Centre?

The one that blinds everybody who drives by? We could do something like, “Merry Christmas — Thou shalt not take the name of Frootloops Council in vain.”

COUN. WATCHDOG: Excuse me, Your Grouchiness, but I don’t believe we’ve ever discussed a Plan B.

MILKBAR: Actually, I wasted quite a bit of time doing a study on that, and found we’ve had five meetings on the subject and you were there every time. Plan B it is, then! Meeting adjourned!

COUN. TOAST: Brilliant!

Mere cold won’t keep us from the salt mines

In my view, there’s nothing “common” about the cold.

My colds, at least, are always extraordinary. They’re at least 10 times worse than any cold anyone else gets. I deserve to take a minimum of two weeks off work and lay around in bed feeling sorry for myself.

I don’t, of course. Like everyone else, I do the brave thing and struggle into the old salt mind so I can spread my contagion around.

Workplace experts always lecture about how sick people should stay home because they walk around shedding germs and pretty soon everybody in the office comes down with the same affliction.

Such people don’t know how the “common” cold works. It’s supposedly most contagious around days two through four, but it actually remains contagious for up to two weeks, the normal timeline of misery for cold sufferers.

That means you’d have to stay off work for two weeks every time you had a cold. Multiply that by three colds per year and you’re off the job for a month and a half, plus mental-health days, vacation time and statutory holidays, and nothing would ever get done.

So, troopers that we are, we show up for work as usual, infect our fellow employees, and they in turn keep coming to work and on it goes. It’s just something we live with.

The Japanese probably have it right — they don’t stay home with a cold, either, but they wear surgical masks our of consideration for others.

Sunday, it began with an ever so-slight tickle in the throat, a small hint of sinus congestion, and by Monday morning when the clock radio came on I was approaching a full-blown state of feeling sorry for myself.

So sorry, in fact, that I quickly became resentful of the daily dose of cheeriness from Bob Price and Peter Olsen as they yakked about the weather.

“I feel like crap,” I confessed to Syd as I lay there in the sack, immobile.

I swear I heard just a suggestion of a sigh from Syd before she responded with the timeworn, but absolutely correct, answer: “Maybe you should stay home today.”

This is why I love the woman; she almost always demonstrates the appropriate degree of sympathy (except maybe that time I had the stomach thing).

“Can’t,” I said, summoning my martyr’s voice. “Too much to do. They can’t possibly get along without me.”

So here I am, feeling like crap at work but manning up and getting the job done. I suppose I could take a day or two off but that’s for wusses. I’ve not been able to find any medical research on why the so-called common cold always makes men feel sicker than women do. There is, however, clear evidence that it does — that clear evidence being the amount of whining men do as compared to women.

At this moment, there are at least five people in this office with colds. Four of them are men, and we all may as well be at death’s doorstep. The fifth, a woman in payroll, is walking around as cheerful as ever, albeit with a bit of added hacking and coughing.

One source says men are not good at being sick because they’re prone to worrying more. Our answer to that is, of course we are. We have more to worry about.

I’ve already decided Christmas is going to be no fun because I’ll be sick as a dog. Christmas dinner will be ruined because my taste buds are on days off. And the weather will be so terrible even Price and Olsen will have trouble thinking up something silly to say about it.

Oh, and about the “common” part of the common cold. It’s called the common cold because it’s common to get one.  Apparently, there are so many variations of the cold virus that we never actually catch the same one twice.

Excellent. We have an endless variety of opportunities to feel sorry for ourselves as we sit in our offices popping lozenges.

mrothenburger@kamloopsnews.ca

http://www.armchairmayor.wordpress.com

 

16-year-old brain not ready to run B.C.

The first thing I thought of when I heard Liberal leadership candidate Mike de Jong saying we should give 16-year-olds the vote was me at 16.

 

I asked myself if I would want this province run by a bunch of 16-year-old me’s. The answer came swiftly — are you kidding?

 

Next I went to the Jacob help line. Jacob is my son and a frequent source for consultation on matters of youth, politics, philosophy and the human condition. He’s now 20, but he used to be 16.

 

When Jacob’s down time is interrupted by a phone call, he answers with something that sounds like “Uwwwafgh?”

 

“Could you have run British Columbia when you were 16?” I asked him.

 

When he’s interested in a subject, Jacob can rouse himself to a state of full consciousness with admirable rapidity.

 

“Probably not,” he said. “I don’t think I could do it today, either. I’m not sufficiently well informed.”

 

“A surprising assessment,” I replied, “since you’re one of the smartest people I know and a second-year political science major to boot. Let me ask the question another way. Would you have wanted to run the province at 16 if you’d been given the chance?”

 

“Maybe,” Jacob mused. “It might have been a lot more interesting than what I was doing at the time. Don’t forget I was in high school and coping with excessive boredom.”

 

“I did forget,” I admitted. “That was when the public education system was an adult conspiracy to suppress the hearts and minds of the young.”

 

“You say that in a goofy voice, but you can’t deny it because it’s obvious,” said Jacob.

 

I decided to try another tack. Some scientists contend that certain parts of the teenaged brain develop more slowly than others, accounting for the changes they go through as they mature.

 

The teenaged brain doesn’t work as a unit to make decisions. It doesn’t assess risks and consequences the same way an adult brain does. It sort of goes madly off in all directions.

 

This is good news, since it exonerates me for getting drunk and rolling my dad’s truck when I was a kid, plus a lot of other things for which I now have an excuse.

 

An article on the Discovery Health website puts it this way: “For comparison’s sake, think of the teenage brain as an entertainment center that hasn’t been fully hooked up. There are loose wires, so that the speaker system isn’t working with the DVD player, which in turn hasn’t been formatted to work with the television yet. And to top it all off, the remote control hasn’t even arrived.”

 

Uh, isn’t that a definition of B.C. politics?

 

Walrus magazine puts it another way: “Two different MRI studies indicate that teenagers do not process emotions the same way adults do. In fact, one study shows that the adolescent brain actually reads emotions through a different area of the brain.”

 

Much has been written about the self-centered teen years of temper tantrums, fast driving, strange sleep patterns, experimentation with drugs, and pre-occupation with sex. We’re now being told that teenaged priorities and choices aren’t just about growing up, but more specifically about the brain growing up.

 

Jacob is of a more traditional view. “I would be more inclined to attribute it to socialization and conditioning than to biological factors, and a natural need to explore boundaries,” he said of the way in which teens settle in to being human beings.

 

“After a certain point, as they experience more of life, they don’t have so much to prove.”

 

Mike de Jong must not know much about teenagers. Allowing 16-year-olds to vote is “a logical step,” he says.

 

Well, based on the science, it’s not logical at all. Yes, we let them drive, but that’s a topic for another day. I say, leave the politics to us adults — we’re doing a fine job on our own, aren’t we?

 

For the last word, I go back to Jacob. “It’s arbitrary,” he says of the ages at which we legally let people do things. “But people should at least have reached a certain maturity.”

 

mrothenburger@kamloopsnews.ca

 

http://www.armchairmayor.wordpress.com

 

 

 

What more can a God do?

From Stephen Trower in response to a joke I published courtesy of reader Ian King:

“For editorial balance, I submit the following joke on true believers to counter the Armchair Mayor’s amusing joke on atheists.

“A Christian gentleman is caught in a flood and retreats to the roof of his house.  When a passing boat offers to take him to safety he declines with thanks, saying ‘I prefer to put my trust in God.’  A few hours later, he is spotted by a search-and-rescue helicopter. When the pilot tells him to hop into the cradle and be whisked to safe ground, he again declines, affirming his confidence that the Lord is well-positioned to see him through the predicament.

“So he drowns and goes to Heaven.  God says, ‘You’re here well before your allotted time.  What happened?’  To which the chap says, ‘It’s your fault. I put my trust in you and you let me down.’  God says, ‘Now wait a minute. First I send you a boat and after that a helicopter. What more can a guy do?’”     
  

The Letter reveals IHA’s dirty little secret

Well, The Letter finally showed up. The one from the Interior Health Authority. 

“I am writing to you on behalf of Interior Health as a valued patient of the Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops.” 
It’s nice to be valued. But, seriously, while I made light of The Letter last week, it’s not really a laughing matter. 

The Interior Health Authority has a credibility problem, and this business over the dirty endoscopes doesn’t help. Nine thousand men and women are now wondering whether they can ever trust Royal Inland Hospital again. 

Doctors and staff are also getting fed up. Like the staffer who calls the endoscope issue “another nail into the coffin of RIH. Our hospital is now considered the ‘dirtiest’ of hospitals in Canada amongst the healthcare community.” 

The IHA, this staff member claims, has destroyed RIH’s reputation in a mere eight years. 

“The lack of community control over our hospital has played a key part in this. The IHA has placed a series of incompetent senior managers in our facility that have been unable to maintain nor understand appropriate clinical controls.” 

A doctor told me this week, “Interior Health isn’t working. Not for us it isn’t. Kamloops should have independent oversight.” 

He worried that the endoscope caper will cause patients to avoid having tests like colonoscopies because they’ve lost confidence. 

Which brings us back to The Letter. 

“You are receiving this letter because you underwent an endoscopic (scoping) procedure at that facility between March 6, 2008 and July 15, 2010. We want to advise you of an issue related to the disinfection of the equipment used to perform that examination.” 

Risk? Somewhere between one in a million and one in 10 million. No further treatment needed but “for the sake of transparency we believe it is important that you are informed.” 

There follows an explanation of how the endoscopes came to be not quite clean, and the steps taken to clean up the problem. The Letter is signed by Jeremy Etherington, MD, vice president of medicine and quality at IHA. 

While this sudden attack of transparency is welcome — the IHA is one of the least transparent organizations around — the “Patient Information Sheet” Q&A that comes with the letter raises as many questions as it answers. 

The endoscope problem was discovered, it says, when IHA was reviewing reprocessing practices at RIH in July this year “after another hospital had discovered residual disinfectant left in portions of endoscopes during the disinfection process.” 

The hospital isn’t identified, nor does it say when the other hospital made its own discovery. Those would be good things to know. If the other hospital was Kelowna (as I’m told it was), and if it was discovered there in December of last year (as I’m told it was), then how is it that it took seven months to do a check on RIH, and another five months to make it public? 

An answer to the second question is on the sheet: “While this was first raised as a potential issue in July, Interior Health spent the next several months taking steps to confirm there was an issue and determining the actual risk to patients. When this risk was identified — as being extremely low — Interior Health sought advice about notifying patients. Disclosure to patients could lead to increased patient anxiety and since no follow up actions or testing was being recommended for patients, Interior Health wanted to be certain that was the most appropriate action to take.” 

Could that be why no disclosure was made at the unnamed other hospital? 

There’s a growing conviction that IHA is broken, especially when it comes to RIH, and that there are three simple answers: return control of our hospital to our community, give RIH a fair share of the budget, and start actually being transparent instead of just saying it. 

mrothenburger@kamloopsnews.ca
http://www.armchairmayor.wordpress.com
  

The Letter finally arrives from IHA

Here’s the content of the letter sent out by Interior Health Authority to those who had endoscope exams at Royal Inland:

I am writing to you on behalf of Interior Health as a valued patient of the Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops. You are receiving this letter because you underwent an endoscopic (scoping) procedure at that facility between March 6, 2008 and July 15, 2010. We want to advise you of an issue related to the disinfection of the equipment used to perform that examination. While we believe that there is little, if any, personal risk to you related to this issue (between one chance in a million and one chance in ten million), and we do NOT believe there is a need for further testing or treatment, for the sake of transparency we believe it is importnat that you are informed.

It is standard procedure that all endoscopes go through a process of manual cleaning then disinfection after each use. Manual cleaning involves carefully washing the instrument and all its channels with a specialized cleaning solution. When this is finished, the endoscope is placed in a special machine that flushes disinfectant through the endoscope channels. Although we have been following the manufacturer’s instructions regarding the use of this disinfectant machine, we have discovered that a small, infrequently used channel of the endoscope was not being flushed with disinfectant. However, it was being thoroughly cleaned manually. We have contacted the equipment manufacturers as well as the Health Products and Food Branch Inspectorate of Health Canada to express our concerns and have subsequently changed the incompatible piece of equipment that was being used in the disinfection process.

In response to this issue, we obtained information and advice from Interior Health’s Director of Infection Prevention and Control and the Senior Medical Health Officer, underwent a thorough external review by an independent physician expert in Medical Microbiology and Infection Control, consulted with the B.C. Centre for Disease Control and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and obtained an external ethics review. After this evaluation, we are confident that the risk of any infectious disease transmission to you is extremely remote, and we do NOT believe there is a need for any specific testing, treatment or follow-up.

Please accept my apology on behalf of Interior Health for any anxiety or concern that this information may cause for you. If you have any questions we would be pleased to discuss them with you. You may reach us via our Patient Care Quality office dedicated telephone line Monday to Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the following toll-free number: 1-877-442-2001. If you do not reach someone directly, please leave a message and your call will be returned as quickly as possible.

Yours sincerely,

Jeremy Etherington MD CCFP(EM) FCFPC

Vice President Medicine and Quality

Interior Health Authority

For whom are we protecting Riverside Park?

The recent hullabaloo over the parkade focused on the “gem” that is Riverside Park and the need to protect it. The question arises, for whom are we protecting it?

Yves Lacasse, who heads up the local RCMP detachment, wants to extend the so-called “red zone” to include the park. He raised the idea back in September, and then again a couple of weeks ago.

Most people think the downtown and Tranquille Road red zones are all about keeping hookers away from commercial areas, but the no-go areas aren’t just about the sex trade.

Police can ban anyone charged with a serious offence in a red zone. The ban can be challenged but, in the meantime, if you’re caught going where you shouldn’t you can be subject to a hefty fine. In many cases, though, it’s the courts themselves who order a ban.

Not everybody thinks red zones are a terrific idea. When Lacasse brought it up at the last Coordinated Enforcement Task Force meeting, Bob Hughes of the ASK Wellness Centre called it a “slippery slope,” though he wasn’t real vocal about it, probably because ASK and the police have a pretty good relationship right now.

The annual Take Back the Night march — held to draw attention to women’s rights — makes a point of going through the downtown red zone as a protest.

The Sexual Assault Counselling Centre is of the view that the red zones “marginalize” women’s safety rather than protecting the public at large.

The centre claims women excluded from the zones aren’t allowed to access services and technically shouldn’t even be living there without permission from police.

Lacasses points out that those who have doctor’s or counseling appointments or otherwise need to be in a red zone can get permission.

It’s true the red zones have often been used to fight the sex trade. Judges frequently combine red-zone bans with probation and orders to seek counseling.

But druggies and thieves can also be subject to it. In one case, it was even applied to a dangerous driver.

One of the worries is that crime is simply pushed elsewhere. Seniors residences and at least one corner store on the fringe of the downtown red zone have complained about prostitution showing up on their doorsteps since the zones were established.

Merchants as far away as Valleyview have said prostitution seems to have moved into their shopping areas due to the zones.

Despite these suspicions, Lacasse is of the view that extending the downtown zone to include Riverside Park would be a positive move.

“We’ve had some bad assaults and other high-profile cases at the park,” he says.

I tend to agree with Lacasse. What good is a public park if people become afraid to go there? I have trouble buying the argument that if somebody beats someone up — or tries to sell sex, for that matter — in Riverside Park it amounts to an infringement of rights if that person isn’t allowed to go there anymore.

Nobody needs to go to the park to access medical services. Nobody has an apartment there. A public park, especially that one, should be a safe environment.

So if we don’t want a parkade in the park, why would we want to allow criminals and prostitutes to use it as a place to do business? Shouldn’t we be protecting it for the public, not for those who prey on the public?

IF THERE WAS A GOD, he’d have a sense of humour. Ian King tells the joke about the atheist chased by the grizzly bear. “Oh, God!” the atheist screams. To which God complains that the only time the atheist mentions His name is when he’s in trouble. So the atheist asks God to at least make the bear a Christian. God agrees. And the bear bows his head and says, “Lord, bless this food, which I am about to receive from thy bounty through Christ our Lord, Amen.”

Mel Rothenburger is editor of The Daily News. He represents the Kamloops Chamber of Commerce on the Coordinated Enforcement Task Force.

A Sophie’s choice between IHA, lightning

I’ve been checking the mail with rapt anticipation the past few days for The Letter.

No, I’m not talking about our MP’s mailer that includes her latest scientific poll on “How wonderful do you think the Conservative government is? Simply wonderful? Incredibly wonderful? Out of this world wonderful?”

Nor am I talking about a letter from Santa telling me I’ve been a good boy all year and can expect a shiny new red sports car under the tree come Christmas morning.

I’m talking about The Letter from the Interior Health Authority, which I expect will go something like this:

Dear Mr. Rothenburger:

You may recall that, earlier this year, we had the pleasure of having you visit Royal Inland Hospital for a checkup of the ol’ plumbing system, which confirmed that everything “in there” is tickety boo. We trust you enjoyed your time with us.

Recently it was brought to our attention that we’ve been neglecting to put those little TV cameras we use for such things through the spin-rinse cycle and they may not have been as spic and span as they should be. Oops.

We just wanted to let you know so that if you happen to come down with anything in the way of a nasty complication or life-threatening disease, we can provide you with a full refund of your parking fee or, at least, an HST rebate.

Meantime, from all of us here at your friendly health-care system, all the best to you and yours during this special time of year. Hoping to be of service again in the near future, we remain,

Interior Health Authority

It may seem to you that writing about such a thing is like going on the Jerry Springer show confessing to be an albino transexual who’s been cheating with your best friend’s sister’s cousin.

Let me assure you, though, that once one has had one’s nethermost regions explored by a tiny TV camera while three incredibly cheerful nurses and a female physician assure you everything is going swimmingly, there’s no remnant of dignity to remain concerned about.

First, they offer you a choice from an appealing selection of tranquillizers (my favourite is Valium) to put you in the right mood, then fire up an air hose and pump you up like a B.F. Goodrich radial to make sure there are no snags, so to speak.

And then…. but I must apologize. I shouldn’t spoil it for any of you guys out there who haven’t yet had the experience.

Back to the point. IHA announced this week its endoscopy equipment had a bit of a cleanliness issue over the past two and a half years, while letting everyone know the danger of infection is less than being struck by lightning.

A letter of assurance has been mailed out to patients who have had endoscopic procedures during the period in question, and they’re also being advised through the media to call the IHA’s information line if they have questions.

Which is what I did yesterday, where I left a voice message and never heard back. So, without the letter, and no phone call, I’m left to ponder the chances of being struck by lightning or by a life-threatening infection from the health authority.

The difference between the two is that nobody sends out letters telling you not to worry about being struck by lightning, so we don’t all go around thinking about it. Now that I know about the IHA’s latest “dirty tools” problem I am, of course, thinking about it.

What the IHA doesn’t understand, of course, is that there’s no reassurance in being told your odds are one in a million as opposed to, say, one in a thousand. One way or another, you’re in the game.

Not naturally being prone to a lot of worry, I don’t think I’ll waste a lot of time calculating my chances of survival at the hands of our friends at the IHA, but if I ever have to deal with another surgical instrument or piece of equipment, I’m going to make sure it’s been well-scrubbed.

And if offered a choice between lightning and the IHA, I’ll definitely lean towards the lightning.

mrothenburger@kamloopsnews.ca

http://www.armchairmayor.wordpress.com